True Happiness

I want to live free. That is why I choose to be a freelancer after all, then I can choose my own hours, what I want to do and when to do it.
But this goes farther than just ones work life, I believe the natural state of humans are based on freedom and not thralldom as is to often seen today in various degrees.
As such I am not a big believer in a big state, but nor am I a believer in Anarchy. A big state means in and by itself that others will have to serve others whether they want to or not, In an Anarchistic state bullies and those with the biggest guns (army) are the ones who decides the daily order.

That is why I prefer the Minarchy, a minimal state, a state that specializes in one thing and one thing only, and that would be the protection of the individuals in that state. Whereas in a big state the government would want to control as much as possible, that being as many fields of profession as possible, and as many aspects of your life as possible. That is doomed to fail and lead to misery from day one, for several reasons,
one being that a generalists always have less information on an specific field compared to that of the specialist who sits with huge amounts of knowledge in his field, but not so much on other fields though. So a big government in itself will only have a little information on all the aspects it is supposed to control, even more often they end up being very knowledgeable in politics while having little or no knowledge in other fields. As such a big government will always end up in a bad shape, and life always ends up miserable for those who live there, especially those who value ones freedom highly. Since a big government wants to tell you how to live your life, what to do with your own property, and what to eat and drink, in other words how to live your life. Who is allowed to do business with who, and whether or not one are allowed at all. Such life is the life of a slave, and a slave can never truly be happy for one reason alone he/she is not free to live ones life as one sees fit. Only one self can truly know how to live ones life, everyone is by themselves a specialist on themselves and their life, just as a physician is a specialist in Medicine and knows how to best cure people of their illnesses, and how to live a healthy life. Just like a business owner knows best how to run his particular business, or a General specializes in how to win wars, and so on.
In communist and Socialist states where the government tries to control as much as possible or everything, and as such makes a mold that everyone is supposed to fit into, and if they don't they will press the into it until they do or they expire. In such states individuality and freedom are despised, only the government or the masses knows how you are supposed to live and if you try to go your own way they will always try to suppress you or extinguish you, they want the you, me or I to disappear and to be replaced by the us, we or the group/community/society. In other words they prefer to kill the individual and to replace it with a Grey mass where everyone is alike, and follows and listens only to the state and their wishes.

In an Anarchy you are free to do as you want, there is not really any laws or there are several different laws depending where you are, and in the end since there is no state whatsoever, it will always be the ones with the biggest guns and army that decides what the laws should be, and if there should be any laws at all. You can only live your life as you see fit as long as you can defend it from those who have their own view on how you should live it, you only have freedom as long as you have the guns or the army to defend it. In an Anarchy everyone needs their own army/police force and justice apparatus to live their life free, and as such you will not really have much of an opportunity to live your life as you see fit, because so much of your time goes to defend it an your freedom. Anarchy is chaos.

In a Minarchy (a minimum state) the state becomes a specialist, and it specializes in the protection of the individuals that lives in that state, an ideal Minarchy consists only of a justice department, a Police force to protect it citizens from criminals within who initiate force, an army to protect from the threats from outside the borders of the state or to protect you from other hostile states.
An ideal Minarchy will protect the rights of the individual and the rights of an individual will be no more and no less than these rights:

1. Right to Life. The right to life is the fundamental right, of which all other rights are corollaries. The right to life states that you own your own body. It is your property to do with as you please. No one may force you to do anything, no one may injure you in any way, and above all, no one may take your life (without consent.)

The opposite to the right to life is life as a slave, where someone or some people essentially own you -- they can dictate what you do, when you do it, and take your life if they please.

It should be noted that rights are guarantees to freedom of actions. They do not provide for anything but freedom of action. There is no right to food, for example; only the right to work and keep the proceeds with which you may buy food.

2. Right to Liberty. The right to liberty is a part of the right to life, specifically referring to your freedom of action. You may do what you want, when you want, provided you don't trample on the rights of anyone else. This is a necessity for man's life because man's means of survival is reason. Survival by reason requires that you are able to act upon your reason otherwise your reason is of no avail. You can only act on your reason if you are free from the coercion of others.

If society were to permit some actions and not others, it would be permitting some reason and not other reason. It would be effectively destroying individual reason by making reason second place to some other standard. When a society prevents its citizens from the initiation of force, however, it is not circumventing reason, because there is never a reason for the initiation of force.

3. Right to Property. Property rights are an extension to the right to life. In order to support yourself through reason and stay alive, you must be able to own and use the product of your labor. If the tools of your survival are subject to random confiscation, then your life is subject to random destruction.

4. Right to the Pursuit of Happiness. The right to the pursuit of happiness is freedom of action. To live, man must achieve values. To achieve values, man must be free to think and act. The right to the pursuit of happiness means a man is free to do anything he pleases, as long as it doesn't conflict with the rights of others. Since man must use his own mind to live, he must be able to choose his values and act towards them. Even acts which are destructive to himself must be allowed, or a man cannot live by his own mind. Ultimately, man must be free to pursue his own goals and happiness.

Notice that this is no right to happiness only a right to pursue ones happiness, whether one will achieve it or not depends upon oneself.

5. Right to Free Speech. The right to free speech is a recognition that speech in itself if devoid of physical threats is not an initiation of force and does not warrant any retaliatory force. Many dictatorships and People's States will outlaw certain types of speech as being dangerous or inflammatory or against the will of the people, but this censorship is just an evasion of reality - hoping that if a problem is ignored it will go away. Freedom of speech is required for liberty because without the freedom of speech, you can not persuade others of what is right and what is wrong. Without the freedom to persuade others, only force can make people act in a particular way. It is an important check on government because it allows transgressions to be identified and fixed rather than hidden and perpetuated.

6. Right to Self Defense. The right to defend yourself is a corollary to the right to life. You must be able to protect what is yours when it is threatened. If you are being attacked the situation leaves the realm of morality - it leaves the realm of the everyday and becomes an emergency. In such an emergency, anything goes. That is the choice that your attacker has made, and he must live with his choice. The government must maintain the right to bear arms so that self defense will be possible.

These are the only rights according to mans nature, that are true rights. One does not have a right to a home, to a living, or a job, since rights such as these will make someone a slave for others and strides against the rights of others to pursue their happiness, to the right to property, and to the right to life. To upheld such rights you will have to take the home from someone or the money or resources needed to get a home, you will have to take from others what is not yours to take, to guarantee the right to a home. You will have to take the money from someone to guarantee a living for someone else. You will have to force someone against their will and better judgment to hire some people to guarantee them the right to a job. That is why such rights are called false rights, since in all such rights you will have to initialize force against another.

I myself love freedom, but I have long ago understood that I can only truly be free in a free world or at the very least in a free state, but only in a free world will one be completely free to live ones life as one sees best.
A free world is today anyway pretty far fetched, a free state seems to be pretty far fetched as well but not as impossibly today as a free world, but then again can one first achieve a free state, then one will be able to make an example for the whole world. Then it will become harder and harder for other states to oppress its people, as one finally have an example of what a free state is capable of achieving, and the degree of happiness that will exist in such a state.

True happiness can only be achieved in a free world, a big government promises security, takes all the hard choices away from you so that you will not have to think about it, it dulls your mind, it indoctrinates you through education, since it will own the public schools and regulate the private schools that is if it allows private schools, it will control the media either directly or covertly by placing key persons at key positions.
As a wise man ones said, "People willing to trade their freedom for temporary security deserve neither and will lose both." Benjamin Franklin.
Such people will never achieve true happiness, the best they can achieve are placebos, a false form of happiness. Such people usually goes to religion because religion tells the not to think, to shut down their minds.
It gives you a recipe on how to live your life, and as long as you follow those rules and let your god/goddess into you you will be happy, they tell you to stop thinking and instead just feel, and to believe and thrust blindly. Through mass suggestions and through the church community you will achieve a false form of happiness, based on not you or your life but on the community and how they view you and treat you.
And if you try to break away from it, you will also break away from that community and the friends you have there, and end up as an outcast a non-believer, who no longer has that "connection" to their god or goddess.
Religion is just as much about indoctrinating as a big state is, the only difference is that in religion you worship a god or goddess, while in the other case you worship the state, and the church community is replaced by the society as a whole.

In a Minarchy such communities will be allowed, as long as they do not break the rights of the individual, and as long as it is voluntarily. You will be allowed to start your own communist societies or to worship any religion you want, as long as you do not force anyone to be a part of that community.
That is opposed to most governments today that seems to be based on the Fascist and Communist ideas that everyone shall come together into their "common" goals, and that no will get away. That everyone shall be molded into that same shape, and no one will get away. Ideas like these are based on force and thralldom and not freedom nor peace. True happiness will be impossible in such societies. The disrespect for the laws or politicians will be great. Crime usually soars in such societies, after all why should it not even the government is in such a state a criminal one.

The more control a government have the more corruption there will be, since you can then lobby to the different politicians to get them to do what you want them to do, to give certain businesses or groups privileges for example. Press groups can press the government into giving in for their demands for whatever, which others will have to pay for. Those who screams the loudest or gives the best contributions will get their wishes through, while the rest will have to pay for it. This is also very often how false rights come into being, where you will have to pay for others whether you want to or not, and whether or not they deserve it.

This is why I am a freedom fighter, why I will always fight for freedom against tyranny, be it the tyranny of one, a few, or the masses. I believe that the only role of government is to protect the rights of the individual as told earlier. Anything else and the government becomes a criminal one.

(Jeg våknet idag med endel tanker virrende rundt i hodet mitt, og som forteller endel om meg selv, og jeg har i de seneste år funnet ut at frihet for meg ikke bare er viktig, men ekstremt viktig for å overhodet kunne ha et lykkelig liv, duh. Men tenkte at tankene var interessante nok til å få ned på "papir", so to speak. Det er på engelsk fordi jeg publiserer det på diverse fora rundt om i verden, kanskje det vil få noen til å våkne og tenke litt :) )